In a major policy change that sounds like a Very Good Idea, the U.S. Army announced today that dog tags will no longer include the Social Security numbers of the soldier wearing them. SSNs have been part of this identification system for over 40 years. — Read the rest

Now that Lindsey Graham is totally unelectable, he's decided to drop out of the "say the craziest thing I can think of" race and started a new one: the race to say things that are obviously true to everyone who's not trying to win the Tea Party, low-information-voter, religious fundamentalist vote.

Movie stars, pro athletes, and rich people will no longer have to suffer the company of their lessers at Los Angeles international airport. For about $1,500 to $1,800 the elite will be dropped off behind closed doors, away from aggressive paparazzi and slack-jawed gawkers. — Read the rest

Albuquerque police officer Jeremy Dear was ordered to wear a body-camera after many of the city's residents complained about their encounters with him. Afterward, he routinely failed to plug in the camera. His camera was not running when he shot and killed a 19-year-old girl in 2014.

The Senate's 6,700 page, $40M report on the CIA's participation in torture has apparently never been read by a single member of the Executive Branch of the US Government, because the Department of Justice has ordered them all to stay away from it.

Two Louisiana cops who killed a 6-year-old boy have been charged with murder after bodycam footage showed that his father had his hands up when they opened fire.

Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, were also charged with attempted murder after firing upon a vehicle at what Louisana State Police described as "the conclusion of a pursuit." — Read the rest

Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "Imprisoned Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning has written a groundbreaking bill to reform the U.S. government's unpopular mass surveillance programs, starting by abolishing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

Filipino politicians have decried an alleged blackmail scheme by Manila airport security officers, who are said to drop bullets into passengers' luggage and then demand cash payouts to stay out of jail.

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Brian writes, "Avant-garde film maker and producer of the highly influential Anthology of American Folk Music series Harry Smith was also an avid collector of folk art. This book compiles some 251 paper airplanes Smith collected from off the streets of New York City, along with the date and location at which they were recovered. — Read the rest

CISA won't make you and I any more secure, and it threatens what's left of our online privacy. The very helpful sounding "Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act" will definitely help the government, though: it'll make it a lot easier for technology companies to share your personal data with the government, and everyone knows that this data never ends up in the wrong hands, so you're fine. — Read the rest

Yoga Joes started life as a wonderful, weird Kickstarter to produce a set of nine "Green Army Men" in yoga poses; having raised over $100K in direct sales at $20/set ($10 for military personnel) Brogamats is now selling them in retail channels at a $28 premium, for all nine: "headstand, meditation pose, cobra pose, warrior one, warrior two, child's pose, tree pose, crow pose, and downward-facing dog." — Read the rest

The job-posting has expired, so presumably The Walt Disney Company found an enthusiastic team player with "superior writing and research skills" and "effective use of the open source and the internet resources" with international experience and a BA in International Relations, Political Science, Global Security Studies, National Security or Regional/Cultural/Area Studies.

This is the eye of a honey bee peppered with dandelion pollen, magnified at 120x.

The image, by Ralph Grimm, won Nikon's Small World 2015 Photomicrography Competition.

"In a way I feel as though this gives us a glimpse of the world through the eye of a bee," says Grimm. — Read the rest

Remember Lynndie England, the 21-year-old low-ranking Army Specialist who, along with ten other low-ranking Army personnel, was determined to be responsible for years of systematic torture in Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, thus letting the entire Army chain of command off the hook for any wrongdoing in one of the worst scandals of the unbelievably scandalous Iraq War?

Maciej Cegłowski's posted another of his barn-burning speeches about the Internet's problems, their origins and their solutions (previously), a talk from the Fremtidens Internet conference in Copenhagen called "What Happens Next Will Amaze You."

22 million Americans' most compromising data (from fingerprints to criminal records to identities of family and lovers) was breached in the Office of Personnel Management hack, presumably by hackers working for the Chinese government.

Sculptor Petros Eftstathiadiadis makes these "pacifist bombs" as a commentary on the Greek political/economic situation, constructing them from materials chosen to seem absurd, playful and harmless. Despite that, a few of these look somewhat alarming to me, possibly because of
Eftstathiadiadis's (admirable) lack of knowledge about antipersonnel weaponry — the soap immediately makes me think of jellied gasoline, for example.

Volkswagen's sponsored content may be disappearing around the internet, but the stink about their emissions scandal ain't going anywhere just yet. — Read the rest

My latest Guardian column, How to save online advertising, looks at the writing on the wall for ad-blockers and ad-supported publishing, and suggests one way to keep ads viable.

Irving mayor Beth Van Duyne is a notorious racist and is also the sworn mayor of the townspeople of Irving, TX, where Ahmed Mohamed and his family live.

On hearing the news that her police chief had dropped criminal charges against Ahmed Mohamed, a boy who made a clock because he wanted to engage with the makers in his new high school, Mayor Van Duyne posted to Facebook, exonerating the police and asking townsfolk not to hold their grotesque abuse of authority and farcically bad judgment against them:

I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat.